The Phantom of the Opera (Oxford World's Classics)

by Gaston Leroux

  1 The former Director of the Opera, M. Pedro Gailhard once told me at Cap d’Ail, at the home of Mme Pierre Wolff,* about the huge amount of damage caused by rats until the theatre management, at a pretty hefty cost, employed a man who claimed he could eradicate the problem by patrolling the lower depth at fortnightly intervals.

  Since then, there have been no rats anywhere in the theatre except for those delightful rats d’Opéra, the little girls who still attend ballet classes. M. Gailhard thought the man must gave invented some secret unguent which attracted rats in the same way that fish cannot resist the special lure which some anglers apply to their legs. The rats followed while he led them to some deep pit or other into which, intoxicated by the scent, they fell and drowned. We have already noted how the appearance of this blazing face caused the fire-officer to panic and lose consciousness (source: private conversation with M. Gailhard). My own view is that the fiery head encountered by Papin is the one which also gave the Persian and the Viscount de Chagny such a terrible fright (source: private papers of the Persian).

  1 No one ever recovered either pair of these ankle-boots which, according to the Persian’s private papers, were left between the flat and the backcloth of Le Roi de Lahore, at the exact spot where Joseph Buquet was found hanged. They were in all probability taken by a stagehand or door-boy.

  1 Daroga is a Persian word meaning the overall chief of the country’s police.

  1 An official report from Tonkin received in Paris in late July 1909, told how De Tham, the notorious bandit chief, was pinned down by French soldiers yet managed to escape along with all his men by using hollow reeds to breathe through.*

  1 Here the Persian could also have admitted that Erik’s fate concerned him too, for he knew that if the government of Tehran discovered that Erik was still alive, it would have meant the end of the ex-Daroga’s modest pension. But it is only fair to add that the Persian had a noble and generous heart and I have no doubt that the dangers which he feared would befall others genuinely exercised his mind. His conduct throughout the whole affair provides ample proof of that, for it was beyond reproach.

  1 It is easy to see why, at the time of writing, the Persian should have gone to such lengths to forestall disbelief. Since those days people have had ample opportunity of visiting ‘halls’ and ‘palaces’ of this kind and such precautions are now unnecessary.*

  1 Not forty-eight hours before the publication of this book I raised this very matter with the very helpful M. Dujardin-Beaumetz,* Under-Secretary of State for Arts, who offered me a glimmer of hope. I stated my view that the State has a duty to demystify the legend of the Phantom of the Opera once and for all and set the strange story of Erik on a basis of undisputed fact. For this to happen (and it would be the culmination of my enquiries) the house by the lake would have to be found, for it may turn out to contain invaluable contributions to the art of music. No one can doubt that Erik was a musical genius. Who is to say that we would not recover the score of his magnificent Don Juan Triumphant?

  1 Interview given by Mohammed-Ali Bey to the special correspondent of Le Matin, shortly after Salonika sent troops into Constantinople.